Hurricane season blows down to its last gasp

One of the busiest hurricane seasons on record draws to a close today, but for most coastal residents it was a breeze.

Although there were 14 named storms, five more than usual, no hurricanes made landfall in the United States this year, which hasn't happened since 1994.

Still, two tropical storms, Gordon and Helene, did strike Florida's West Coast in September, causing substantial flooding and damage.

And the most destructive tempest for South Florida wasn't even strong enough to be considered a tropical system.

The so-called no name storm in October dumped more than 15 inches of rain and left more than $1 billion in flooding damage, mostly in agricultural losses in Miami-Dade County. But it also swamped Broward County, turning streets into rivers and a mobile home park in Pembroke Park into a lake. Later it would develop into Tropical Storm Leslie over the Atlantic.

Even so, those storms were mere bumps compared to a wrecking ball like Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

"I'm thankful we didn't have a hurricane make U.S. landfall, so I would consider this a great year to break in," said Max Mayfield, who concludes his first season as director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami-Dade County.

Both the center and renowned expert William Gray had predicted the season would be more active than normal. Of the 14 storms, eight were hurricanes and three were major hurricanes, packing winds of 111 mph or greater.

In an average year, there are 9.3 named storms, 5.8 hurricanes and 2.2 intense hurricanes.

"This was an active year, in keeping with our predictions of a new era of increased hurricane activity," said Gray, who conducts his studies at Colorado State University.

Hurricane forecasters now will conduct a post-mortem on this season in hopes of making improvements for the next. Mayfield said his team already knows that storm track and intensity forecasts are still lacking.

For instance, forecasters had no idea that within an 18-hour period at the end of September, Hurricane Keith would morph from a category 1 storm into a category 4 monster with growling 140-mph winds.

"We didn't see it, the models didn't see it," Mayfield said. "Something goes on within the core of a hurricane that we just don't understand."

That storm was particularly worrisome, Mayfield said, because if it had threatened to built-up in South Florida, it would have been "disastrous." As it was, Keith wobbled over Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras and Mexico, killing 19 people.

Also, forecasters had predicted Hurricane Debby would grow into a powerful category 3 system and take aim at South Florida in late August. But Debby was torn apart by upper-level wind shear and the mountains of Hispaniola.

Then there was Hurricane Alberto. Forecasters predicted it would gravitate to the northeast and die at sea. Instead, it looped around for about three weeks, becoming the Atlantic's longest-surviving August tropical storm.

One bright spot: Hurricane specialists were able to hone two crucial computer models, and that will help future predictions.

"The forecasts were not as good as I had hoped they would be," Mayfield said. "I guess the lesson here is, the computer models have definitely improved, but still have limitations."

Gray was proud his predictions have been close to the mark for the past two years. For this season, he had forecast 11 named storms, seven hurricanes and three intense hurricanes would form.

On the other hand, Gray forecast a 72-percent chance that a major hurricane would hit the U.S. coastline and a 54-percent chance one would hit the East Coast, including Florida's peninsula.

"Our estimate of U.S. landfall by an intense hurricane did not prove correct, but landfall predictions don't work well in any individual year," he said.

Both Gray and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationcontinue to warn that the Northern Hemisphere has entered an era of intense hurricane activity that could last another two decades.

Gray does not attribute the increased storm formation to global warming, because he says there have been a decreasing number of hurricanes in the north Pacific Ocean in the past six years. He said the warming would not cause storms to increase in one ocean and decrease in another.

But Mayfield isn't so sure. While he said he doesn't know the relationship between global warming and hurricanes, he said the fact is global temperatures and sea levels are rising.

"It certainly appears we're in a more active period, and that scares me," he said. "Even if we have the same number of hurricanes in the future, they would do more damage because of the rising of the sea level."

To improve forecasts, hurricane officials plan to step up the sampling of water temperatures in advance of a storm with special probes called dropwindsondes.

But Mayfield said the quest to better understand how hurricanes work has been stymied by federal budget cutbacks -- and thus staff reductions -- at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami. That complex, on Virginia Key in Miami, works hand in hand with the National Hurricane Center to study all aspects of the monster storms.

"I need a healthy research community," he said.

In the meantime, Mayfield said he would continue to warn against complacency -- particularly after a year when no hurricanes posed a major threat to the United States.

"The way I'm looking at this, we bought a little time," he said. "It would be foolish to think we won't have destructive hurricanes hit the U.S. coastline."